November 2024
I was diagnosed with Stage 3b Cervical Cancer in 2007, a few months before my 21st birthday. I had been going to the doctors for several months with symptoms, but they kept telling me I had a urine infection, would give me antibiotics, and send me on my way. I asked for a smear test, but they refused because of my age, even though I had every symptom under the sun. It wasn’t until my friend told me to get a second opinion from a different doctor’s surgery that they found it. This doctor examined me and thought I had left a tampon inside me as it was so white and ulcerated.
I was told I would need to start treatment pretty quickly and because of that I would lose my fertility. I went on to have 5 weeks of external radiotherapy, 6 weekly sessions of chemo, and 2 internal radiotherapy (brachytherapy) sessions.
In August 2007, I started taking HRT due to going into menopause. In December 2007, I was told that there were no longer any signs of cancer and I had been given the all-clear. As soon as treatment started, I have had trouble with my bowels, and this has never really gone away. I have always struggled with urgency and mainly diarrhoea. I get abdominal pains that come in waves, and for the last 8 or so years, I have been struggling with nausea and vomiting as well. In 2019, I paid privately to see a gastroenterologist who, after some tests, diagnosed me with bile acid malabsorption. He gave me some tablets which seemed to help for a while, but after around a year, the nausea and vomiting came back more frequently.
In 2023, I was struggling to cope. I was also experiencing a lot of faecal incontinence, so I was lucky enough to see the same gastroenterologist again, who requested an MRI and tested me for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), which I tested positive for. The MRI came back showing I had 40cm of damage to my small intestines, so at this point, he decided to refer me to a colorectal surgeon to see if surgery was an option. I went to see the surgeon in June of this year, who has sent me for lots of tests, including a capsule endoscopy, which got stuck, CT scans, and a flexi sigmoidoscopy, which also didn’t get very far. He has offered me surgery but said it would mean I would need to have a stoma and I would need parenteral nutrition (tube fed) because of how much bowel they would need to remove. He said it is completely up to me, and I haven’t decided yet, but it is something I am considering due to the amount I am being sick. I have also lost weight, not drastically yet, but enough to notice a difference. I am still struggling daily, and I am not at the end of this journey yet, but hopefully, I will get a solution soon.
Just finding the PRDA, hearing people going through the same issues as me, and realising that I am not alone makes me feel so much better about it all. I can’t remember if I was ever told about any long-term effects, but I still would not have changed the treatment I had. It saved my life at the end of the day, and without it, who knows if I’d even be here today.
In 2019, I was lucky to have a child through surrogacy, something I never felt was possible. Every day, she makes me want to never give up and keeps me motivated to keep fighting this awful disease.